Over the past two decades, from Japan to European Union countries, significant public and private investments have been directed toward the development of social robots. Yet, despite repeated promisses, social robots have largely failed to achieve the mainstream societal uptake anticipated by policymakers and industry actors. By contrast, animal-shaped social robots — most notably the robotic seal PARO, in circulation since the late 1990s, but also simpler robot cats and dogs — have demonstrated comparatively greater longevity and acceptance, particularly in long-term care contexts. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a dialysis unit of an Austrian hospital using the therapeutic seal robot Paro, I present an article (co-authored with Anna Mann) in which we argue that the ontological ambiguity of social robots elicits conflicting responses among carers of different professional levels. Additionally, we introduce the notion of “arbitrary care collectives” to explain why such robots may become disused. This article is a starting point for my Veni-funded project “Paw Support”, which ethnographically explores technological adoption and resistance in long-term care in the Netherlands.